Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh........I loved being home in Seattle. But now, I am back in the ATL. And we are ready to return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Le Blog.

And friends, I will be the first to admit I missed you. I am spending as much time this week as feasible catching up on your blogs. And of course, I am also back to my 6 posts per week schedule. Thank you all for reading while I was gallivanting around the Pacific Northwest.

And on that note, here are some thoughts on my visit home. Or, what I will call:

Irony: The Seattle Visit Edition

Irony is when you once had the opportunity to have your mouth washed out with soap by one of your parents...not just washed out but bar of soap jammed in and twisted for saying Shove it to your siblings when in reality, you didn't even know what it meant and may or may not have allegedly heard this phrase from one of your parents.

And then while visiting Seattle you have to reprimand first your Father for uttering sh*t, bullsh*t, and G. damn it in front of your son. And then you then must reprimand your normally sweet talking Mom for saying prick in front of your two year old after we were pulled over by a police officer. In her defense, he was being a prick. Where is the bar soap now, honey?Irony is when you got a speeding ticket the very first week you had your driver's license and car, had your Mom find out without you actually telling her, having her stomp into your little after school job and demand your keys, only to have her promptly return in a few minutes to return the keys since you have no other means of returning home.

And then, when you are older and oh so much wiser, you ask your Mom to drop you off at the big night of your 20 year reunion and since she has your son in the car, you then tell her to be careful driving him home approximately three times AND ask her to text you when she returns home safely. Mind you, this woman has multiple children and raised them all in a time when car seats were unheard of and seat belts were highly optional and rarely utilized.

Irony is when your entire high school existence, your Mom would always offer to do your make up for big events to which you gave a totally impolite UMMMM NO THANKS and made a ridiculous sneering face. Like your Mom could not possibly put on your heinous blue eye shadow any better than you. And then when you are older, and wiser, and realize that amongst the many reasons your Mom looks like a million bucks is because she does wear and apply her make up in a fabulous way. And then you ask her to not only do your make up for your wedding, but also for your big night of your 20 year reunion. And it looks terrific.

Irony is when you were a kid and obsessed with Mario Brothers and Ms. PacMan, and your Dad had to teach you how to play, and you think you still have all the mad skills now but no, he can still kick your arse to this day.

Irony is when you were in high school and had to show your Mom how to do something on the computer but now, it is your Mom actually teaching you secret tricks on your Blackberry.

Irony is when your a kid and since you have "indoor chores" like loading the dishwasher, so you do SUCH a bad job when required that you hope to be removed from this job, and then when you are visiting home, you completely volunteer to mow your Mom's giant yard and she has to show you how to use the mower since you were so spoiled you have NEVER mowed a lawn in your life.

And you actually want to do a really great job lest you provide your Mom cause to believe you can't even mow a lawn well. And you are secretly so grateful that your Mom has high-tech super mower that requires very little work on your part because you discover there is more than one reason you have never mowed the giant lawn...because mowing the lawn contains ZERO fun.

And irony runs both ways. Like when you are cooking soup on the stove, since you like your soup on the stove, your Mom says, "Oh, did you know you could put that in the microwave?"

Really? You think? And in your brain you say What is this microwave of which you speak?And since you are a serial smart arse, you actually verbalize this out loud to your Mom.

And she finds NO irony in her ongoing confirmation that at least ONE part of you will never change.

This was wonderful! All I can add is, irony knows no boundaries. Just you wait until you are in your 50's and your parents are 80...and you experience complete role reversal...I feel like Scooby Doo much of the time, snapping my head rapidly (and repeatedly)back and forth, saying, "Ro-Ro!

Welcome back! I love the irony here, amazing how it all comes full circle. I will have to work on my father and his not intended to be but are - racial slurs around my 12 month (and growing) daughter. He doesn't mean to, but he does, and I HATE IT.

I love your writings! They Make me laugh, sometimes outloud even! This reminded me so much of my Mom! Haha! Im glad you had a nice visit back to Seattle! Hope your little trooper is all settled in from a long trip! This was our trip home this past weekend! http://geezclouise.blogspot.com/2009/09/down-by-riverwe-will-go.html

I can totally relate to all of these. I remember get my mouth washed out with soap. I think we go to jail or something now if we do that to our kids, right? Also, I'm not so sure that pic of the "girl" in the blue eye shadow is actually a girl. Just saying...

Welcome home. It seems that your parents may need supervised vistation with your brilliant little man. Yesterday's airplane ride home could have gone horribly, horribly wrong had he been yelling bullshit and prick instead of "calling people on the carpet.":)

My mouth was washed out with soap a few times. Once for staying up late with my sister and talking. Irony is that after that, we ended up fighting most of our childhood (probably because we were punished the one time we were getting along) and not becoming friends again until we're in our late 20s.

I LOVED this post. I spent most of it laughing out loud. I laughed especially hard over the bar of soap incident and all of the reprimanding you had to do. Hope your little man didn't catch on to them! :)

I saw this quote on another blog recently and it was too good for this post to not share it:

“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished by how much he'd learned in seven years.” - Twain

I remember those days when I was getting ready to go from college for Spring or Summer Break and I would worry if I might end up dropping an occasional "f" or "h" bomb by accident without realizing it. Thank goodness it never happened!

A great post, JennyMac! Left me mesmerized at my imagined future with my imaginary future in-laws, my imagined image of how my mom will be like in the future, and all them ironies I'll be smirking, happily, at ....

Thought you'd be amused to know that while searching for a definition of irony this particular post shows up on the first Google page. How ironic that it's the only blog listed on the page and I already read you. Yay for you.